Hands-On With Activision’s Elite Call Of Duty Social Network

Last week, I provided my first impressions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but one major element of the game was missing in action: an online strategy. Analysts and Activision executives have been waxing philosophical about a possible subscription service for the massive shooter franchise for years, but it’s finally coming. Call of Duty Elite will provide all CoD players with stat-keeping, skill improvement tips, and social networking across all future Call of Duty titles. I tried the service out for myself two weeks ago; here’s all the details.

The core Call of Duty Elite experience is split into four distinct areas: Career, Connect, Compete, and Improve. Let’s take a look at each individually.

Career

The Career page, which you can set to default to any supported Call of Duty game, will include a summary of your overall stats across all games as well as specific player cards for each title. Player cards include a ton of data, such as your current level and prestige, number of hours played, and, of course, the ever-important kill-death ratio. If you want to be able to point to specific numbers as you brag to your friends about how much better you are, you’ll be able to easily pull up other players’ profiles and compare to your own.

Digging in deeper, you’ll be able to look at specific stats from each match you’ve played recently, right down to looking at a heat map that shows every kill and death, allowing you to pinpoint specific chokepoints on maps where you have trouble or tend to dominate. Career will even track your stats with each individual weapon and perk, allowing you to quickly flip through and see which custom classes you perform best with.

Connect

In addition to the stat-tracking, Elite seeks to give Call of Duty players a deep social networking experience that revolves around the game they love. The Connect section of the service will be focused on this aspect.

You’ll be able to create and join groups based on mutual interests, locations, and more. For example, you could create a group for a specific sports team you like or just join the “#basketball” group to find other CoD players who love basketball. I might join a "#Minneapolis" group to find other CoD players in this area, and I fully expect Game Informer readers to create an "#overblood" group. Each group will have a comments section allowing you to banter with new-found friends and coordinate for playing games online.

Also included in the Connect section is a theater where you can look at screenshots you’ve grabbed from your games as well as videos you’ve created. You’ll be able to connect your CoD Elite account with your YouTube account to automatically upload videos you’ve created in-game to the Internet. Other players will have the option to tag you in their media, so like Facebook, any screens or videos you’ve been tagged in will show up on your Connect page.